Climate at risk - Canada retreates while Russia finds giant Methane bubbles

[auroraglacialis]

The scientists involved in that Methane study formed a workgroup and published a website, open letter to governments and a number of data. I disagree with the "solution" to use geoengineering to fix the problem - that can in the best case be a temporary patch, allowing governments to further postpone an emergency agreement - in the worst case it could have severe side effects. Here is the open letter on their website:
Home

Already today, all the potentially huge Arctic positive climate feedbacks are operating.
The Arctic summer sea ice is in a rapid, extremely dangerous meltdown process. The Arctic summer ice albedo loss feedback (i.e. open sea absorbs more heat than ice which reflects much of it) had clearly passed its tipping point in 2007 – many decades earlier than models projected, meaning that it is now inevitable that the Arctic will become ice free in summer within the next few years. Models of sea ice volume indicate a seasonally ice free Arctic likely by 2015, with the possibility of a collapse to a small amount of residual ice as soon as summer 2013.

Such a collapse will inexorably lead to positive feedbacks under which today's carbon sinks such as permafrost, peat bogs, and rainforests worldwide will become net sources of atmospheric carbon leading to planetary catastrophe.

The retreat of sea ice is leading to the most catastrophic feedback process of all, many decades ahead of projections. This is the venting of methane to the atmosphere from frozen methane gas hydrates that are destabilizing along the East Siberian continental shelf in the Arctic.